"Cultural Trends vs Mathematical and Scientific Research Content

in the ACM/SIGGRAPH Traveling Art Show"

Flow of electrons on the micron scale, creation of landform and life on the earth: a wondrous, monstrous bird. Algorithmic paths of ink weaving innumerable lines.

Layers of legends and myths, suggestions triggered by counterfeit artifacts, memories of past civilizations, intermingled with our own imaginary projections.

Focus of contemplation, meditation - hopes and dreams, personal vision.

Furtive, fluid or persistent memories, soul-searching discoveries.

Evocation of early tool development, mechanical devices, imaging processes.

Seriality, recursive evolution, change of ideas and forms, abstraction and deformation. Light, depth and vibrating warmth intermingled with silhouettes and shadows.

Search for the unique, celebration of cultural diversity, delving into the transformative nature of image.

This is an invitation to explore N-Space, the ACM SIGGRAPH Traveling Art Show 2001 Gallery.

Eric Heller's "Exponential" depicts electron flow patterns riding over a bumpy landscape. We may see landscapes or a monstrous bird with feathers revealing the creation of landform and life on the earth, making clear their unity.

Kent Oberheu's "Tentacular Continuum" illustrates a morphological study as a progression of form sweeping through space, taking on a new shape as it traverses the fourth dimension of time.

Michael Field creates realizations of symmetric chaotic dynamics. Designer Chaos is the result of this research. Symmetry imposes a unity and harmony on a design. The particular symmetry type can have a psychological and physiological impact, creating different effects and illusion.

"Curving Spirolaterals": Algorithmic generators and transformations elicit images of a far-off future, while at the same time reminding us of past ritual icons and patterns. They have the element to generate the unexpected: the unexpected in repeatable way.

"Oculaders" Through a play on shadows and lights David Haxton depicts a synthetic space with ladders that are not confined to the controls of real world gravity.

"What Noh Masks Whisper to Us" Akiko Tohma

A common impression given by Noh masks seems to be a "curious reality" - the coexistence of abstraction and deformation. Old masks carved in the 14th century suggest a knowledge of the facial bone and muscle structures. Viewers are able to project their memories of human faces onto the masks.

Upper-center is a Ko-omote mask, used for young female roles, in the middle we discover the facial muscles beneath the mask, lower right the skull.

The image suggests a transition between life and death, past and present.

In the animation "Yuki The Spirit Of The Snow" by the same artist, the visual effects are inspired by Noh drama, where the effects depend, not on the direct representation of objects, but on the audience's imagination.

The movements of the Noh masks are similar to the movements on an actual stage.

"Heroine In Peril" is inspired by the Sumerian Myths of Innana, who travelled to the underworld to rescue the laws of Sumerian society. Innana died while in the under world and was resurected to return to the living world with the laws.

Leslie Sobel is interested in seriality, in recursive evolution, and change of ideas and forms - exploring an idea as it evolves and changes. Leslie worked with a dancer, shooting her improvistional performances with a digital video camera. Our perception of the world is colored by life in an interconnected technological society. This is a comment upon the way technology alters our perception of reality.

"If These Walls Could Talk" "Ghost Town Artifacts" evoke the power of places and artifacts to tell the stories of people who may have passed through in an invitation to the imagination to fill in the missing pieces. Pealing wallpaper is a metaphor for digging back through layers of time and memory. Naomi Ribner mixes new and old processes, for the physical and conceptual qualities of old and new, future and past.

Jessica Maloney addresses the various layers that make up our existence. Social, moral, spiritual and emotional layers combine to form who we are. We are constantly taking outside experiences and bringing them in (wires going in and out of our mind carrying energy and information). Take a step back: there is consistency and overall beauty. Words are a way to transfer inner thoughts to the outside world.

Key: mystical symbol referring to the unconscious world. Discovery, possibilities and answers. Keys can be a link to freedom and happiness; wires represent restrictions. We must choose the key that is engrained within ourselves, not one that is attached to the ideals of others.

Cynthia Rubin takes us to an old house in Slovakia, enveloped by twisting trees and vines. Nearby is a castle, summer residence of the Hapsburg family. Time does not stand still as one moves through this place, it fluctuates from the distant past, to upheaval, and then to the present. "Old House In The Shadow Of A Castle" is part of a series of images built out of the remembering of places which contain echoes of past lives.

"Intersections" is part of a series of synthetic architectural interior apaces. Space is as much a virtual or psychological construction as it is a reality. The artifacts are taken from everyday experience to suggest possible narratives. The viewers will project into the space their own memories.

Jean-Pierre Hebert creates unique pieces using a mechanical device: the plotter. Flexible, innumerable lines organize shapes through precise calculations. Although the computer is involved in the creative process, the artist sees his work as nothing but a tribute to thousands of years of drawing, geometry and fine art from all civilizations past. Numbers being in the same continuum as our minds and souls, "Mount Tai" in "Shandung Mountains" follows the classical Chinese Scholars' fantasies in its own algorithmic way.

Hye Jin Yoo believes that the main sense of nature in the East is of universal events allowing for the spontaneous awareness and abstractedness of time and space. In the "Overgrown Artificiality" the yellow trees represent a sickened and altered nature as a metaphor for the human mind in some stage of purification. The Western idea of substance and physical matter which is transitory in time and space has combined with the Eastern sense of value of event in the making.

"Rebirth Of The Voo Doo Child" is based on an explosion of rolling heads and growing sea anemones. Nothing is scanned, no photography captured. The light and depth of this computer generated work bring forth the weight and the vibrating warmth of the classic art forms.

Elena Ilkanayev's " chelovechki-01 " (little people) - a surreal representation of human emotions, thoughts, feelings - is a fantasyland of our unconscious

In "Courage" Harvey Goldman pays homage to our most primary of tools: the human hand, its gestural communicative capacity, its potency as primal tabulation and measuring device. Its evolutionary relationship to the world of high technology is an ongoing source of wonderment aand contemplation.

"Manufactured Existence: The Remains" comes from a series that explores the deconstruction of the human body. The humans have been combined with mechanical parts to create beings that are hybrid of man and machine. In this image the body has been broken down and used in the creation of another human being.

"Tidal Pool" endeavours to bring the viewer into an intimate experience of nature. The sense of discovery when coming upon a tidal pool is recreated by the dimensional shift encased in the lenticular center. The illusion of real depth invites viewers to linger and explore, as their movements affect their view of the image. The work becomes a focus of contemplation and meditation, mirroring the role of nature in our lives.

"F-G And The Iron Clocks of Film" is reminiscent of Muybridge's photosequences of the 1880s juxtaposed with present-day digital work. Contraptions such as his "zoopraxiscope", or the Friese-Greene camera-projectors in this picture, represent pioneering hardware that hold iconic status for artists working to come to terms with the hybrid forms of digital art.

"Forehead", and other images in its series deal with the passage of time, mortality, sex, sexual energy, vulnerability, power, the energies of being alive, and the passage of those energies. How do we reconcile our power and our vulnerability? Where does the image end and the non-image begin? The elements of the image spill over beyond the standard rectangle of traditional pictorial space.

The "Six-Part Pattern Series" is based on ideas of subdivision of space. a alrge object is divided into six sections by one vertical and two horizontal breaks. Resulting objects are then divided by the same technique, recursively to a predetermined limit. We find a level of detail which mimics that found in the natural world and creates an illusion of reality.

"Waterworks" explores the water-like quality of memory. The mnemonic detritus washes up towards the top side of the image bobbing around, some detritus rising to the surface ans some sinking out of vision and memory. An apparition on the rocks of a coastline - the idea of the mind's double take - leading us to question the reality of what we might see, or, if we have seen.

"Whitewater": layers of influence or layered ways of perception? Is illusion the future of history? Or has history always been an illusion? Australia as a majority coastal society, living on the edge of a vast, hot and empty space. What is it that we use to negotiate a fluid space?

"Moonlit Manifestation": Moon enters the city - Its converging structures belong to other town interiors, left behind with inattention, showing the way to new encounters -Wooden moon soaks familiar sandboxes, parks, factories well-retained in the memory. a city, never visited before, welcomes the guest.

Hiroko Uchiyama is pursuing the creation of digital-based artworks in which only one original exists. She has chosen fabric as an output medium, manipulated the fabric to create 3D creases. The visual impression changes with the viewing position. "RT111" expresses the relationship between non-tactile virtual space and tactile physical space.

The "Gestures " series represent the balance between opposites. It embodies a message of hope that each indegeneous culture may enter the 21st century with its unique cultural blueprint intact. In the race towards economic and technological advancement and the quest for globalization, we run the risk of sacrificing cultural diversity.

Gloria DeFillips Brush's image is about the aura of language, the trajectories of word forming and attempting to move toward some syntactic position. Meaning is devised, relocated, de-created. language slips, revealing and reviving, negotiating the soft terrain of ellipsis and substantation.

Melissa Harshman has been exploring ways in which to incorporate digital images into traditional printmaking practices. her goal was to create prints that are esthetically pleasing and conceptually significant, often playing off the meaning of the chosen icon.

"Used Chambers" Just as the artwork is multi-layered, the title has levels of meaning.it refers to the private spaces within one's mind and heart that feel used up, but that mus tregenerate in order to go on. It has real world significance in that the key unlocks an old armoire, discarded by unknown families, then kept, to provide space for the children's new belongings, new chapters.

"Intercere" acts as a treshold between physical and implied space, dealing with notions of the transformative nature of the image. Approachable, accommodating space becomes increasingly more interior and condensed.

Steven Ramsey "Octoboy" "Gatorman" All art is about pursuing a personal vision, however epic or individual the scope of that vision maybe. How artwork is done should be secondary to the success of the work.

Kimberly Burleigh utilizes sophisticated technology to emulate an ealy experimental, low-tec photographic procedure - photograms. forms derived from terrorist equipment are used in place of the everyday objects used in early photograms. this not only creates more evocative images, it also invites a connection between photograms and X-ray surveillance technology.

Huguette Chesnais

01 Eric Heller * Exponential

02 Eric Heller Transport II

03 Eric Heller Transport III

04 Eric Heller Transport VI

05 Ken Oberheu* Tentacular Continuum

06 Michael Field Hellfire III

07 Robert Krawkczyk Curving Spirals

08 David Haxton Oculadders

09 Akiko Tohma* What Noh Masks Whisper To Us

10 Tina Bell Vance Heroine In Peril

11 Leslie Sobel Sarah Dancing Reflections

12 Naomi Ribner If These Walls Could Talk

13 Naomi Ribner Ghost Town Artifacts

14 Jessica Maloney* Disoriented but Not Confused

15 Jessica Maloney Ask yourself

16 Jessica Maloney Undefined

17 Cynthia Rubin Old House In The Shadow Of A Castle

18 Kyle Riedel* Intersections

19 Jean Pierre Hebert Mount Tai

20 Jean Pierre Hebert Shandong Mountains

21 Hye Jin Yoo Overgrown �/Artificiality

22 Petra Evers* Rebirth Of the Voo Doo Child

23 Yelena Ilkanayev Chelovechki-01

24 Harvey Goldman Courage

25 Jason Zimmerman Manufactured Existence: The Remains

26 Karin Schminke * Xcrossings: Tidal Pools

27 James Faure Walker F-G And The Iron Works of Film

28 Michael O'Rourke Forehead

29 Ken Huff Six Part Pattern Series: 2000.6

30 Philip George* White Water

31 Philip George Water Works

32 Anna Ursyn Moonlit Manifestation

33 Hiroko Uchiyama* RT III

34 Lyn Bishop Gesture IV

35 Lyn Bishop Gesture V

36 Gloria DeFillips Brush 7369

37 Melissa Harshman A Piece Of The Pie

38 Melissa Harshman Breast Stroke

39 Leslie Nobler Farber* Used Chambers

40 John Fillwalk Intercere II

41 Steven Ramsey Octoboy

42 Steven Ramsey Gatorman